First Council At Nicaea

Regarding the Byzantines and the rise and modernization of Christiandom, I've chosen to write about the First Council of Nicaea in 325AD. Emperor Constantine called together 1800 bishops from all over Christiandom (of which 318 attended - the number is disputed, but this one, in its specificity, as counted by the most sources) in response to a heretical cult in Nicaea. Essentially, Constantine disliked the cult in the area for reasons unexplained and wanted the Church to define its doctrine in order to exclude the heretics.

The attendees set their agenda and it is translated as this (the underlined sections are attempted hyperlinks to more information):

1. The Arian [a non-trinitarian sect, thought Jesus was 'unbegotten' and a divine 'creature' of God] question regarding the relationship between God the Father and Jesus; i.e. are the Father and Son one in purpose only or also one in being;

2. The date of celebration of the Paschal/Easter observation [moving this away from the Jewish tradition]

3. The Meletian [a dude that was concerned with how easy 'bad' Christians get back into the Church] schism;

4. The validity of baptism by heretics [if theyre not Catholic, should we care about them or slaughter them?];

5. The status of the lapsed in the persecution under Licinius [one of the emperors - he had lost a war in 324 to Constantine.]

The bishops largely accomplished all that they set out to accomplish on the political side of things (sorting out a 'church position' in the world - a rather foreign concept in the post-Reformation world of many denominations) yet did something much more profound in the course of human events.

Those with a history in Church (mine being very recent) will recognize the paragraph they produced in 325AD:

"We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father [the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God], Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; By whom all things were made [both in heaven and on earth]; Who for us men, and for our salvation, came down and was incarnate and was made man; He suffered, and the third day he rose again, ascended into heaven; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. And in the Holy Ghost. [But those who say: 'There was a time when he was not;' and 'He was not before he was made;' and 'He was made out of nothing,' or 'He is of another substance' or 'essence,' or 'The Son of God is created,' or 'changeable,' or 'alterable'—they are condemned by the holy catholic and apostolic Church.]"

There are hundreds of translations of this paragraph, the Nicene Creed, but this is considered to be a direct translation from the original without input from different denominational traditions. The brackets are words inserted by bishops who wanted more political specificity. That specificity, however, came in precedent of unity that lasted with the Catholic church until the Reformation (ironically, the Reformation began in Britain, the only area of Christiandom from which Constantine didnt invite bishops). The 20 decrees that are, today, either second nature to Christians or not recognized, were issued with a democratic element of bishops. Here, it may be fitting to propose a comparison.

It is incredibly loose, but the Council at Nicaea with its 318 bishops from a geographically widespread area seems like an early representative democracy. Granted, there is an element of theocracy here, but the grouping together to come to make collectively binding decrees is the definition of a representative form of government. Also, the discrepancy between those invited and those who actually showed up is a precursor to the number of MEPs or US members of Congress that show up on any given day. To those more interested, it may be worthy to look into early examples of post-Athenian democracy within Christiandom and especially within Greece (I am sure somebody has already) to draw conclusions for the development of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution.

In this development, there might be trends disregarded by the secular academics which could explain why both tradition and the attempted destruction of tradition have sprung up so strongly in our own age. Perhaps it could help explain why the EU has failed to acknowledge that the Lisbon treaty did, indeed, get killed. After all, the Nicaean Creed is still active, what else from that meeting could be?

[[[The pictures from the top: explanation of the trinity as it is set up in the Nicene Creed, a fresco of the Council, and the main bishops (with Emp. Constantine in the center) with the original Creed.

Sources:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11044a.htm

http://www.papalencyclicals.net/Councils/ecum01.htm

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/nicea1.txt

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I also found this totally unrelated similarity interesting...

There is an odd semblance between this and Obama's creepy stimulus logo. The top one is a T/O Map of the world...maybe the stimulus logo tells us where to find that recovery he promised (I'm not partisan...really ;) ).]]]